The odds are that you are reading this on your phone. You may have come here via social media, CNN apps, email, or a good old browser. It’s possible that you didn’t open your phone with the intention of loading this story, but here it is.
Call it a need, habit, addiction, what you like: we are all on our mobile phones. The research and data on smartphone addiction, as well as the negative impact on sleep, mental performance and mental health, are astounding. Research has found that even when we are not using them, if we are in the same room as our smartphone, it affects our brains. But under generation, they have become an integral part of our lives.
Nevertheless, many people find ways to cut off. Some people hope that digital detox will boost performance and happiness. Some parents are parents. Others are quoting the fear of data privacy, or choosing to mural themselves from the attention economy. To the extreme, some young people have turned their backs on technology, proudly defining themselves as Luddites.
Instead, many people are turning to “Damfen.” It’s a smartphone in front of a smartphone or a new model with limited functionality, sometimes called a feature phone or a brick phone. There is a bubble and highly invested community of users who offer advice online about where to buy “deadstock” (old phones in production) and detailed specifications of current models.
According to Yang Wang, senior analyst at Counterpoint Research, the feature phone market is big and still growing, but it gradually decreases as more people in developing countries upgrade to smartphones. Last year, nearly 15% of mobile phones sold worldwide were functional mobile phones, worth $3.2 billion, with nearly 210 million devices. But the total was 1.7 million people sold in North America, with only 12 million people sold in Europe, mainly in Central and Eastern Europe, Wang said.
In these and other developed countries, niche manufacturers are creating premium alternatives, addressing the cultural shifts supported by online movements, such as Bring Back Back Back, Hashtag #BringBackFlipphones and free childhood for smartphones in the UK grassroots scheme.
As you can imagine, some of the founders of these companies have their own stories of disillusionment.
Inspired by its relationship with Blackberry in the mid-2008, Petternevy founded Swiss Punk in 2008.
“I was hooked,” he said. “It’s Saturday, and I need to send my wife a message that she’s going to buy some ice cream late.
The first solution to Punk was MP01. It was launched in 2015 with a tactile keypad and sturdy design, allowing for call and text with calendars, alarms and other basic features. MP01 set the tone of Punk’s “very strict and Lutheran” approach to product design, what Nebby calls “digital minimalism.” But by providing users with the ability to share phone numbers with the paired smartphone, Punk suggested that it was to provide users with options rather than forcing the device to go to a cold turkey.
Kaiwei Tang, co-founder of mobile phone company Light, said the company, which was born from Google Creative Lab Incubator in 2014, and that he and future business partner Joe Holier are surrounded by entrepreneurs who boast app engagement times. “I asked myself,” Tan said, “What do I do? How’s my time?”
“The problem is not the devices, it’s the business model. It’s the attention economy,” he explained. “All free apps, all social media platforms, and all browsers are trying to maximize engagement, so we collect data and categorize people into different groups so that we can sell to advertisers.”
Light phones are designed to keep out the attention economy. Tang and Hollier decided to create a phone from scratch. What doesn’t show users’ ads, all interactions guarantee a clear ending, and it doesn’t show you an infinite scrolling feed. When Tang pitched the phone to FoxConn, a Taiwanese manufacturer of IPHONE and other smartphones, in 2015, the executive told him that even his family might need it.
The first model was shipped in 2017. Today, the Light Phone is the third generation and features a 5G connection, an NFC chip and a fingerprint ID. The company continues to create everything from scratch (preferring terminology over apps) from messages to maps.
“I want to make it boring,” Tang said of the user experience. (The same tactic has been adopted in Punkt’s MP range. Some studies and increased anecdotal evidence suggest that switching to grayscale can reduce screen time.)
Light phones are considering adding more tools, such as two-factor authentication and contactless payments, and are considering integrating AI assistants.
“We’re not anti-tech,” Tan emphasized. “We consider ourselves a lifestyle brand. We promote a very different lifestyle than a smartphone-centric lifestyle.”
In the spring, Light launched the Light Phone III, with over 100,000 people using the device worldwide, the co-founder said despite the Light For Gorvering Adage Advertising and Retailing for Premium prices.
Just because a phone is stupid or limited in functionality doesn’t mean it’s cheap. Economies of scale mean that small businesses are paying premiums on materials and dealing with fewer R&D resources than Apple and Samsung.
Punkt’s first Dumbphone sells for $229, raising eyebrows, while the MP02, a five-generation Dumbphone, is selling for $299. Punk sells around 50,000 units each year, Nebby said.
The Light Phone III is available for sale for $699. Tang defends prices immediately. “$699 is not a major investment to reimburse your time and attention.”
“You can get a flip phone for $5-10 from Alibaba or Amazon. If that’s working for you, I’m all for it,” he said. “(We) haven’t returned, so we’re moving forward.”
In Finland, manufacturer HMD Global asks questions. Can the company do both?
HMD has begun releasing feature phones, representing Human Mobile Devices, taking over the Nokia brand and revived in 2016, including the classic models The Nokia 3210 and Nokia 2660 Flip.
Between 2022 and 2023, the flip phone sales doubled, said Adam Ferguson, head of product marketing, HMD wondered why. The investigation led the company to a #BringBackFlipphones campaign on social media. “The last time I saw it, 61 million people used that hashtag. That’s ridiculous,” he said.
In addition to the output of feature phones like Light and Punkt, HMD has begun developing smarter devices that suggest a future midpoint in the mobile phone market.
HMD fuses were released in August. Smartphones that start life as brick phones are designed for children, giving parents the power to unleash their functions as their children age.
This is a product of HMD’s better phone project, and the company spoke to 37,000 children and parents about its relationship with mobile phones.
“This huge thing has been bubbled up under our industry for years,” Ferguson said. “People are very unhappy with the way they set up their devices at this point and they want a change,” he added. In particular, parents are introducing their children to their mobile phones for the first time.
By default, all apps on the fuse, including the camera, are locked. Caregivers can set up their phones to only accept calls and messages from the contact set list. “All families can tailor the experience to their children,” Ferguson said. “It forces those conversations. This is one of the big things research said it’s losing.”
The feature in the talk is the integration of the heart blocks of fuses, which detects nudes on the screen. According to Ferguson, AI developed by Safetonet in collaboration with the Internet Watch Foundation, Harmlock, developed by the Internet Watch Foundation, was trained with 22 million instances of inappropriate images. When working on the background of a fuse, when a user tries to capture a sexual image, pixel-recognized AI will shut down the camera or ring nude content in a browser or social or messaging app.
“We’re working with (harmblock) to embed it deep into the device to prevent bypass,” Ferguson explained.
Punk and Wright say their typical buyers are distorted young in their 20s and 30s, and in Punk’s case, it’s male. By focusing on young Gen Z and emerging Gen Alpha users, Hughes wants to promote a healthier relationship with the phone from filming.
The MC02 (sold for its robust privacy and security features), a device such as the Fuse, Light Shone and Punkt’s first smartphone, shows an expansion, or at least a more conscientious view of what consumers want in their phones.
“When you reach (market) maturity… it starts to become more niches,” said Nebby, who foresees “more fragmentation” in the smartphone industry.
Can the biggest smartphone makers fill those niches and make themselves “silly”? That’s unlikely, given how opposed it would be to their business model, Wang said.
However, there is always the possibility that large guns will sway due to increased consumer demand and will begin to adopt new ideas. Ferguson believes there is “money to be made” that tempts Hughes to introduce the manufacturer. It could come at the cost of HMD, but “if we can drive such changes, it’s an absolute victory,” he said.
“It’s not easy to be a dwarf in this area of this giant,” Nebby said. He argued that functional telephone businesses like him need to exist, and that they could even thrive amidst cultural change.
“Punk is not here to become the next Apple. Punk is here to offer a choice,” he said.
“We will always be niche players. But we are trying to deal with industry dissent, and we have an obligation to act as it is the most important consumer industry in the world.”
